Gazza: My Story (18 page)

Maurizio Manzini, Lazio’s general manager, and Carlo Regalia, another member of the management staff, came to visit me in hospital. They brought me a birthday present: a Lazio shirt and a gold watch engraved with a special message from their president. Apparently, it was worth £7,000. I was about to go down for an operation and had just had the pre med. When I woke up, the watch had gone. I thought at first someone from the hospital had pinched it, but it was me father who had taken it. Until then, he had never asked me for anything in my life, apart from a house, a car, a holiday, a wage. So taking a watch was nothing very much, really. I’m
only joking. I probably told him to take it. I was so woozy I could have said anything. My mother took my medal.

Jimmy Gardner came to see me as well, bringing me a pellet gun, which came in handy for pointing out of the window at the photographers waiting down below in the street. But mostly we just dropped water bombs on them. At least they stayed outside. Some reporters tried to sneak into my room, pretending to be old friends from Newcastle.

My surgeon, John Browett, did a brilliant job in reconstructing my shattered knee, but it was clear it could be up to a year before I could do much with it. After a couple of months, I went out to Portugal to convalesce with John Sheridan, the Spurs physio, who put me through some intensive exercises and lots of swimming. But when I wasn’t exercising, I was still hobbling around on crutches. Jimmy came out as well, along with John-Paul, my sister Anna’s husband. Jimmy and I woke him up one night by pouring a fire bucket full of water over his head. You should have seen the look on his face. I nearly fell off me crutches laughing.

Terry Venables used to say, after I first came to Spurs, that I wouldn’t be affected much by the culture
shock of moving from the north-east to London because I had brought my own culture with me. Many young players get homesick, and feel lost and out of place. Some are so unhappy they decide to go back home, as George Best did when he first went to Manchester United from Belfast, or Graeme Souness when he moved to Spurs from Edinburgh.

It was true. I never felt lost. From the beginning, I had friends like Jimmy staying with me in the hotels I was living in, or my dad, plus other family who came to visit me. I planned to do the same thing when I went to Italy, if it ever happened. If I ever made it.

At that point Sheryl and I had split up, so the plan was for Anna and John-Paul to come out and live with me in my villa in Rome, to keep me company. That all fell through, obviously, when I got injured and it became clear that I would need several months to recover. But Anna had already given up her house in Dunston. So instead of going to Italy, she and John-Paul moved into my house in Hertfordshire.

As it turned out, this suited Anna, because she was keen to audition for a part in
The Phantom of the Opera
, which was then on stage in the West End of London. So while she was living in my house, she was singing all
the time, practising her material. John-Paul also played the guitar a lot. I was supposed to be resting and recuperating, trying not to do my head in with all my usual worries. In the end, I moved out of my own house and left them to it. I went to live in a hotel for a while. Actually, I’d always enjoyed hotel life, so it was no hardship for me.

After weeks and weeks of physio and special rehab training, working my bollocks off, riding millions of miles on a training bike, I went up to Gateshead for a break. I was walking back from the pub one night with Lindsay, my little sister – we’d had quite a few drinks, but we weren’t drunk – when some kids started hassling us, shouting at me and calling me names. Then a workman on his way home got involved – and I think he
had
had a few drinks – and there was a bit of pushing and shoving. In the midst of this fracas, one of these people punched Lindsay in the stomach. I wrongly thought it was the workman, so I lashed out at him and he fell to the ground. I had to do something: to have failed to protect my little sister would have been cowardly. It led to the police being called and me being taken off to the police station and kept in a cell for a few hours. I rang Mel Stein, and he arranged for a local lawyer to come and help me, and
eventually I was allowed home. The incident was, of course, splashed all over the papers, and some of them made me out to be a right yob, describing events as if I’d been in a drunken brawl. In the Italian press, on the other hand, I was presented as some sort of hero going to the rescue of my endangered sister.

In August I went out to Rome to meet the Lazio management and be officially introduced to the club. My dad and some of the family came, along with Glenn Roeder, my old team-mate from Newcastle. He was planning his retirement from football and was looking to get into coaching. Although he’s ten years older than me, I’d always got on well with him and he had been great to me since I’d come south to Spurs, sheltering me when I was in trouble, giving me helpful advice and showing me real kindness. It had been decided that he and his wife Faith and his family would come and live in Rome while I was there, to keep an eye on me. Glenn would be my football friend and companion and stop me from doing anything too daft. It was also an opportunity for him to have a close look at Italian coaching methods, to see how they did things, which he thought would be useful to him in his future career. So there were advantages all round.

We arrived in Rome to be greeted by amazing
scenes. We were mobbed at the airport, and there were screaming fans everywhere. I did a press conference, and some interviews, and was taken round the sights of Rome. There were Gazza posters and photos everywhere, even though I still hadn’t signed for Lazio, the negotiations having been put on hold while they waited for me to get properly fit again. At the club, I met Dino Zoff, the Lazio manager – or coach, as they call them over there – for the first time. He, of course, had been one of Italy’s most famous players and one of the world’s best goalies. I was told they still wanted me, and were willing to wait till I was back in peak condition, whenever that might be – but not at the original price of £8 million-odd that had been agreed before my injury. They were still arguing the toss about what the new fee should be and who would get what share of what.

Glenn and his family made inquiries about schools in Rome for their kids and started looking for a villa. They liked the city and were impressed by the whole set-up at Lazio. I went to watch a Lazio game, where I was introduced to the crowd. They went wild. I gave them a little thank you, in Italian. All round the stadium there were banners, in English, welcoming me with messages such as:

It made me dad and me feel quite at home.

Before I left, it was agreed that I should make the move to Rome very soon, now that my knee was on the mend and I was getting really fit again. So finally, at the end of September, with all the arrangements in place, I went up to Newcastle to say goodbye to some of my old Dunston friends. As far as I remember it, after a few drinks at various watering-holes, we went to a club where a lad I had never seen before in my life comes up to me and says, ‘Are you Paul Gascoigne?’ I say yes – and he just whams me. As I crumpled to the floor I could feel my kneecap giving way. I put my hand down to feel my leg, to see what had happened, and my thumb practically sank into my knee. The hole was huge. The results of my operation had just been ripped apart. After all that work. I thought, fuck it. All the weeks and months of agony I had been through to recover, all the help I’d had from doctors and nurses and coaches and physios, and now this had happened. There seemed no way my career would recover this time.

When Glenn Roeder heard what had happened, he said, ‘That’s it.’ He didn’t even want to hear my explanation. It had not been my fault: a stranger had lashed out at me for no apparent reason. But Glenn said I’d promised never again to get in scrapes like that, and not to put myself in any situation where it could happen. So I shouldn’t have been going to the sorts of pubs and clubs where there was a danger it might. I argued that this wasn’t fair. It could have happened anywhere, and to anyone. But he wouldn’t listen. He said this was the end, that I’d had me last chance. And he cancelled all his arrangements for Rome.

I know it was stupid not to have seen this daft kid coming after me, but the point was, I didn’t want to stay away from the people or places I’d come from. I’ve never wanted to grow away from my roots. I want to live as I always have, not dropping old friends and old haunts, not moving away, not pretending I’m any different from them, that I’m something I’m not. And I like to think that, despite everything, I haven’t changed. I’m still the same Geordie lad.

It was, though, a high price to pay. I had to have my third major operation in five months. Afterwards I returned to my house in Dobbs Weir, where Anna helped
to look after me. Trying to recover all over again seemed to take for ever, but once more I worked like hell. In the meantime, a new president took over at Lazio, Sergio Cragnotti, who seemed tougher than the last one, but they still appeared to want me. Of course, it meant all the financial negotiations started again, with yet another series of deadlines and endless visits from doctors and specialists, both English and Italian. Lazio sent their experts over several times to check how I was doing, and I went over to Rome as well, to another triumphal welcome, so that they could all see me, and to show the fans they could expect me soon.

The deadline for the transfer was set for May 1992, a full year after my Cup final disaster – depending, of course, on me being passed fit. I was by now training again, and having treatment at Spurs, as I was still a Tottenham player.

At training one day, Steve Sedgley was showing off his new car, and being really flash. I happened to have a 2.2 air gun in my car, so I got it from the boot and shot out the back window of his car. I had to pay the bill for the damage, but it was worth it just to see the expression on his face.

When the Italians were over to check up on my
progress, Maurizio Manzini came to watch me training. One of the youth players was sent off to bring him a pot of tea. This lad was heading towards us, carefully carrying the teapot, cup and saucer and all the other bits and pieces on a tray, and for a laugh I got out my rifle and shot the teapot right off the tray. I think by that stage Lazio were beginning to wonder what they were signing.

When it was time for my new club’s final check, I was so worried that I wouldn’t be fit that I arranged an extra practice session for myself after normal training was over. I paid all the Spurs youths and young reserves £50 each to stay on and play a game with me, just so the Italians could see for themselves that I was OK.

I was finally transferred to Lazio at the end of May 1992 – the end of the football season in England and in Italy. I thought I deserved a break, after all the agonies and exertions, so I took the whole family off to Disneyland in Florida. There was my mam and dad, Anna and John-Paul, Lindsay and her boyfriend, my brother Carl, Jimmy, of course, and a couple of other friends as well as Sheryl.

Before my transfer, Sheryl and I had parted once again, but I soon realised how much I was going to miss her, on my own in Italy, with no Glenn and his family to give me company and support. I drove round to Shel’s
house. I pleaded with her to come with me, bursting into tears, telling her how much I loved her, missed her and needed her.

I had never lived with Shel when I was at Spurs, but she lived near me so I was often at her house. I had my own place at Dobbs Weir. Anna continued to live there for some time, while I was away, then I eventually sold it. I decided I didn’t need it any more.

It took a while, but she agreed to come in the end. It was decided that Bianca, who was then aged about six and was at school, should stay in England and live with her father. Shel and Mason would come with me, and Bianca would come out during her school holidays.

With a party of that size, the Disneyland holiday wasn’t cheap – and that was before anyone went shopping. Shel managed to buy herself some nice bits of jewellery. It wasn’t a total success, though. I have to admit that my family didn’t exactly hit it off with Shel.

My transfer fee from Spurs to Lazio was finally settled at £5.5 million – quite a lot less than the sums being bandied around when negotiations had first started, but of course I’d had all those injuries and lost over a year of football. The club offered me a signing-on fee of £800,000. I didn’t care much about money – coming
from a poor background, you know what it’s like to have nothing – but you have to get as much as you can while you have the wherewithal to earn it. Around that time, there were approaches from Japan, offering me something like £2 million over two years, so I thought I’d try it on with Lazio. I spoke to them on the phone and said I wanted a £2 million signing-on fee, clear of tax, and I wanted a yes or no in five minutes, or the deal was off. Before the five minutes were up, they came back – accepting it. I was totally amazed.